Brian Bowden hasn't adjusted to all the realities of being a chef at a restaurant in an upscale hotel.

For example, a recent Sunday was looking as if it would be a slow(er) one at Mingle on the Avenue.

Then Bowden was told that a wealthy Saratoga Race Course patron was en route and would be staying at the Grand Pavilion Hotel, just off Broadway on Lake Avenue in downtown Saratoga Springs, which houses Mingle on the first floor.

The hotel guest would be in the dining room later that evening. She was flying in her own caviar and she requested buckwheat blini, crudite and more.

"This was fine, and everything went great," Bowden said. "But I'm not really used to things like that coming out of nowhere."

Chances are, if you're eating at Mingle, it won't be roe shuttled over from the Caspian Sea.

You'll be choosing from Bowden's well-focused and impressively executed menu that combines his trademark touches and those that established Mingle's original Albany location as one of the city's more exciting new restaurants when it opened in late 2011.

Bowden can cater to the wealthy, but he can also make those in the lower income brackets feel spoiled. You can splurge on his cooking and likely never feel cheated by a $30 entree.

Bowden comes to Mingle from Javier's, a Central American fusion restaurant two blocks away. He became well-regarded prior to that for his cooking at The Ginger Man in Albany and Creo in Guilderland. His cooking had a large hand in Javier's four-star review from the Times Union in 2013. Bowden left Javier's in December. He and Jose Filomeno, Mingle's owner, linked up shortly thereafter.

Filomeno opened the original Mingle in a small space on Delaware Avenue in Albany. His mother, Un-Hui, runs the kitchen there, cooking fiery Korean specialties. Mingle Albany is her restaurant, Jose says. Mingle on the Avenue is largely Bowden's.

There are odes to Korean fare here, but the menus are decidedly different. At Mingle on the Avenue, Bowden's signature ceviche is almost always on the specials list. The halibut is whistle-clean, perfection in slightly salty, milky-white fish laid out over a circle of paper-thin cucumber slices fanned out like a deck of cards. If you ate at Javier's during Bowden's tenure, this will be very familiar. His ceviche, which he learned handling hundreds of pounds of fish daily at a Caribbean resort, still carries that unique mix of sweet from orange against the bite of lime. Sriracha is used in the preparation, too, and is colorfully dotted along the plate as well.

Bowden's duck breast ($32) may be the best I've ever had in the Capital Region. It wasn't just that the breast was flawlessly seared and pulled out of the oven at just the right time to augment its fatty brilliance; a jalapeno gastrique glowed like a warm light on the plate but was all sweet and savory and no whiff of punch-you-in-the-chin heat that might be expected from the pepper listed on the menu. Bits of black quinoa cooked in thyme and heavy cream were small enough to weave through a pinhole and provided a remarkable balance of delicate crunch against the duck's soft chew. Shredding a few ounces of confited duck leg and laying it on the side of the breast is unnecessary for all the right reasons. This is the type of dish you never forget.

A filet of wild salmon in a black pepper-and-coriander rub ($28) wasn't breathtaking. The fish was a tad over-crisped on its edge, though the meat was still succulent. A fine blend of fennel slaw with a nutty romesco sauce propped the plate up, as a touch of lemon helped coax out extra flavor.

Bowden has a way with presentation that few chefs do, squeezing into that perfect part of the visual spectrum between trying too hard and not hard enough. The salmon arrives in a huge bowl curved down to one side, almost like a prop custom cut for pint-sized skateboarders. The fish is pushed to one side and the brilliant white of the plate shines. For a second you think someone is going to come over and shoot this for the cover of Food & Wine.

I expected a behemoth of a baked Alaska, but was relieved when the plate came out with a tennis-ball sized scoop of coconut ice cream atop a sturdy homemade gingerbread shortbread.

The wine list is anchored by some solid by-the-glass options, but doesn't stand out. Beers are adequate and mixed drinks are currently heavy on summer sweetness. My friend's lemon-drop martini was, pleasantly, more subtly sugary than candy-like.

Prices are not unreasonable, considering that this is Saratoga Springs and Bowden's kitchen. Dinner for two — a pair of appetizers and entrees, dessert and drinks — came to $160 before tax and tip.

The dining room is full of shapes, soft light and inviting colors. Filomeno says he wanted Mingle on the Avenue to feel sophisticated but no so fancy that you're scared to touch anything. Service is convivial and casual with no illusions that this is Saratoga's version of Eleven Madison Park, equally accommodating whether you're splitting a bowl of mussels or caviar fresh off your private jet.